Crossword clues for bureaucracy
bureaucracy
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bureaucracy \Bu*reau"cra*cy\, n. [Bureau + Gr. ? to be strong, to govern, ? strength: cf. F. bureaucratie.]
A system of carrying on the business of government by means of departments or bureaus, each under the control of a chief, in contradiction to a system in which the officers of government have an associated authority and responsibility; also, government conducted on this system.
Government officials, collectively; -- used especially of nonelected government officials.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1818, from French bureaucratie, coined by French economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712-1759) on model of democratie, aristocratie, from bureau "office," literally "desk" (see bureau) + Greek suffix -kratia denoting "power of" (see -cracy).\n\nThat vast net-work of administrative tyranny ... that system of bureaucracy, which leaves no free agent in all France, except for the man at Paris who pulls the wires. [J.S. Mill, "Westminster Review" XXVIII, 1837]\n
\n\n
\nbureaucrat, &c. The formation is so barbarous that all attempt at self-respect in pronunciation may perhaps as well be abandoned.
[Fowler]
Wiktionary
n. 1 government by bureaus or their administrators or officers. 2 a system of administration base upon organisation into bureaus, division of labour, a hierarchy of authority, etc., designed to dispose of a large body of work in a routine manner. 3 the body of officers and administrators, especially of a government. 4 any administration characterised by excessive red tape and routine.
WordNet
n. nonelective government officials [syn: bureaucratism]
Wikipedia
Bureaucracy is an interactive fiction computer game released by Infocom in 1987, scripted by popular comic science fiction author Douglas Adams. It is Infocom's twenty-fourth game.
Bureaucracy is a political book written by Austrian School economist and libertarian thinker Ludwig von Mises. The author's stated motivation in writing the book is his concern with the spread of socialist ideals and the increasing bureaucratization of economic life. While he does not deny the necessity of certain bureaucratic structures for the smooth operation of any civilized state, he disagrees with the extent to which it has come to dominate the public life of European countries and the United States. The author's purpose is to demonstrate that the negative aspects of bureaucracy are not a result of bad policies or corruption as the public tends to think but are necessarily built into bureaucratic structures due to the very tasks these structures have to deal with. The main body of the book is therefore devoted to a comparison between private enterprise on the one hand and bureaucratic agencies/public enterprise on the other.
A bureaucracy is "a body of non-elective government officials" and/or "an administrative policy-making group". Historically, bureaucracy was government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected officials. Today, bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution.
Since being coined, the word "bureaucracy" has developed negative connotations. Bureaucracies have been criticized as being too complex, inefficient, or too inflexible. The dehumanizing effects of excessive bureaucracy became a major theme in the work of Franz Kafka, and were central to his novels, The Castle and The Trial. The elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy is a key concept in modern managerial theory and has been an issue in some political campaigns.
Others have noted the necessity of bureaucracies in modern life. The German sociologist Max Weber argued that bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which one can organize human activity, and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies were necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency and eliminate favoritism. Weber also saw unfettered bureaucracy as a threat to individual freedom, in which an increase in the bureaucratization of human life can trap individuals in an impersonal "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control.
Bureaucracy is an organizational structure with the task of implementing the decisions and policies of its governing body.
Bureaucracy may also refer to:
- Bureaucracy, one of the five seasons of the Discordian calendar
- Bureaucracy (book), a 1945 political treatise by Ludwig von Mises
- Bureaucracy (video game), a 1987 Infocom game by Douglas Adams
- Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, a 1989 book by James Q. Wilson
- Celestial bureaucracy, the pantheon of Chinese mythology
- Red tape, excessive regulation or adherence to standardized procedure
- Street-level bureaucracy, individuals who implement laws and public policies
Usage examples of "bureaucracy".
If the Earthservice picked up the tab for his fare to Epiphany, only to find that his bequest was of little or no value, would the bureaucracy be willing to unpocket for a ticket home?
With its population of one and a half billion souls, all born-again Christians carrying the cruciform, most employed by the Vatican or the huge civilian, military, or mercantile bureaucracy of the Pax state, the planet Pacem paused to listen with some interest.
But even with the power this particular dextrier had as handlinger representative to the Fat Sun bureaucracy, it was subservient to the noble-caste, the seers, the sinistrals.
The heavy bureaucracy of the Soviet state, inherited from a long period of intense modernization, placed Soviet power in an impossible position when it had to react to the new demands and desires that the globally emerging subjectivities expressed, first within the process of modernization and then at its outer limits.
By then Grom had engineered for himself a rapid rise through the ranks of the tiny Union Island government bureaucracy and was already chief of staff to the island administrator.
The name of this young man was Baron Alexander Yegorovich Wrangel, and he belonged to one of those Russian-German aristocratic families of Baltic origin which, under Nicholas I, staffed the higher echelons of the bureaucracy and the Army and continued to do so, to a large extent, under Alexander II as well.
The obvious growth of bureaucracy showed that the League was already stagnating, wandering down a wrong path that would prevent them from accomplishing anything great.
Warlike, secular, antimonarchist, they advocated a return to ancient Starbridge values and denounced the government of Argon Starbridge, which was sunk in bureaucracy and superstition.
Thomas Cromwell, who wanted to reform the bureaucracy and limit the power of the Church, Henry VIII had begun closing down monasteries and appropriating their revenues for the Crown.
In due timeand not overmuch time, considering the snaillike creep of progress among the Cuban bureaucracy, not to mention the vagaries of sea-borne communication and the exceeding delicacy of treating with such sworn enemies as the European interloping, excommunicant trespassers on lands that Rome had long ago given solely to Spanish-Moorish keepinga guarda costa from Cuba, an armed sloop, had arrived in the basin below El Castillo de San Diego de Boca Osa with a message from the Governor of the Indies noting that neither the Norse, the French, the Irish, nor the Portuguese would any of them admit to knowledge of this dreadful fire-arming and training of the savage indios .
The Congress overrode the military procurement bureaucracy and ordered them to accept the Jacobs Industries Protean Manjack as it was.
And Mankin was either a much-trusted and highly ranked agent of something like the National Security Agency, or the Central Intelligence Agency, Drug Enforcement, or our new Homeland Security Agency, or any of the other ten or twelve federal intelligence bureaucracies busy competing with one another, and now his bosses have missed him.
However, Nitta had a reputation as one of the few honest men in a corrupt bureaucracy.
It was very distressed to learn that the bureaucracy it had served had become the tool of a dictatorship, and was completely in favor of overthrowing the Protector, provided that it could be done with very little bloodshed.
Rapid events required rapid responses: the needed consensus could only be reached in a free-form setting unencumbered by snail-paced bureaucracy, cabinet-level politicking, and endless second-guessing of timid analysts.